Pushing Boundaries
by highlands girl
Summary: Joe Morelli is a good cop, and in this story, a good man. It's a Babe story, but Joe deserves some happy too.


A/N: Dog in the Manger has once again transformed my ramblings with her excellent beta skills. You'll recognize what belongs to JE.

_Joe Morelli's POV_

I was sitting at my desk, completing annual performance reviews, when I heard the call on the scanner.

_Car on fire at the corner of Hamilton and Fifth. Female driver appears unharmed, but Emergency Medical Services are en route. _

It wasn't my job to respond. In fact, since I had been promoted to Chief Detective, I had more paperwork than fieldwork, and the reviews had to be done this week. Truth be told, though, I had always been a sucker for damsels in distress. _Once more for old time's sake_, I told myself.

Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. The front of the familiar Subaru Outback was crushed against a telephone pole, smoke rising from the engine compartment. A green van with the words, "The Plant Kingdom," emblazoned on the side, was wedged against the crushed rear of the car.

At first glance, it looked bad. Really, really bad. I felt the familiar substernal burn of acid reflux as I scanned the scene, needing to reassure myself that the report that had gone out over the scanner was true.

I sucked in a breath when I finally caught sight of her. She was standing silently in the unseasonably cold rain that had started to fall, her back to me, staring at the wreckage. Her brown hair was shorter than I remembered, and she looked like she had lost at least ten pounds. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest, and I could see her hands, palms down, on her back. It looked like she was giving herself a hug. The hitch in her shoulders told me she was crying… silently.

She looked desperately in need of comfort, but honestly, I wasn't quite sure about the etiquette here. It took me a full minute to come to a decision. _What the hell,_ I thought finally. _We've known each other since we were in grade school._

"Hey,"I said, wrapping my arms around her in a firm, but chaste embrace. "You OK?"

She raised tear-stained face to look at me. "It wasn't my fault."

"It doesn't matter," I said, wrapping my arms a little tighter in an effort to stop her shivering. "As long as you're OK, fault doesn't matter."

"It matters to me," she said firmly. "The van driver ran the red light. Eddie said, witnesses saw him leave Pino's, after knocking back more than a couple of beers with lunch. I think he tried to hit the brakes when he saw me, but the van skidded on the wet pavement and pushed my car into the telephone pole."

I nodded and we stared at each other for a minute, unsure of what else there was left to say. "So… Your husband should be here soon," I said softly. I was sure Eddie would have called him.

"No," she said. "He won't." She didn't sound upset. Resigned, maybe. Or relieved.

When I shot her a questioning look, she explained, "He's out of town." It sounded like an afterthought when she added, "Indefinitely."

"The guys from RangeMan then… "I began hesitantly.

"No," she said again. "I'm not comfortable with them monitoring my every move. I... When I took the car, I insisted that all the trackers be removed."

Mary Lou Stankovic stood up straight and looked me in the eye. "I see two choices, Detective Morelli. After a tow truck gets here, you can drive me home… or I can call a cab."

_~oOo~_

I adjusted the heater in my Jeep Liberty to the highest setting. Although, I'd convinced Mary Lou to put on my jacket, she was still shivering.

"Do we need to stop and pick up your boys?" I asked. I think I remembered that there were three, but their ages escaped me. I tried to picture the Subaru, and whether or not there were car seats in the wreckage.

"No. Mason and P.J. are at camp in upstate New York. Michael, my five-year old, was really sad that he couldn't go too, and so my sister invited him to stay with her and her youngest son this week. They're going to try camping in her backyard." Her voice cracked a little before she continued, "I guess that's really lucky, otherwise they would have been with me." No doubt, she too was imagining the ruined backseat.

"It's probably also fortunate that you were driving… the Subaru." _Stephanie's car_, I added silently.

"I think you're right." I heard a rueful laugh. "I suspect that car had a number of post-factory safety modifications, knowing Ranger—" Mary Lou let her voice trail off. "Sorry."

"It doesn't bother me," I replied, mostly honestly. _At least, it bothers me less now, than it did six months ago. _"I appreciate that he tries to keep her safe." I cut my eyes from the road ahead of us to Mary Lou for second. "I know firsthand that's not an easy job."

"She gave me the car when they moved," Mary Lou answered my unspoken question. "I was in need of reliable transportation and they insisted." She cleared her throat and shifted in her seat. "Steph said, there wasn't much need for a four-wheel drive in Miami."

We drove for a few blocks in silence, before my curiosity got the better of me. Since we had broken the ice on difficult discussions, the detective in me decided to work on another mystery.

"So you want to tell me about Lenny?"

"Take your next left," she said. I thought maybe Mary Lou hadn't heard my question, or maybe the answer was no. "I'm the third house on the right."

As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed the grass was a little tall and the lawn needed some edging near the sidewalk. I couldn't help but let my eyes linger on a large crack in the upstairs window.

"Foul ball," Mary Lou said, picking up on the direction of my gaze. "Just before my guys left for camp. I haven't had a chance to have the glass replaced yet."

She turned in her seat so that she was facing me. "You were nice to bring me home," she said. "The least I can do is invite you in for a cup of coffee."

I tried to think about the last time I had been in the Stankovic home. Maybe two or three years ago, I'd accompanied Steph to one of Stankovic boys' birthday parties? In retrospect, it seemed a little odd that, in all the time we were together, Steph and I never went on double dates with her best friend and her husband. Maybe that had been part of the problem. In retrospect, there hadn't been enough "dates." I couldn't remember why we never invited the Stankovics over for a backyard barbecue at my house.

"It's OK," Mary Lou said softly, interrupting my wandering thoughts. She had interpreted my silent contemplation as reluctance. "I completely understand that you need to get back to work."

In reality, I wasn't all that eager to return to the stack of paperwork on my desk just yet. "Actually," I said, killing the engine and tucking the car key into my pocket, "I don't have to rush back to the office. Coffee would be nice."

We entered the house through the back door, and Mary Lou shrugged off the TPD windbreaker, placing it on the back of a kitchen chair. She pulled a bag of coffee from a canister on the counter, dumped some beans into the grinder without measuring them, and then transferred to freshly ground coffee to a paper filter. When she hit the start button on the coffee maker, she seemed to suddenly notice the digital clock that was built into the machine.

"Jeez, I'm sorry, Joe. I didn't realize it was almost six. You must be starved. I should have offered you dinner instead of coffee."

I pulled a chair away from the kitchen table, sat down and fought hard to suppress a smile. Mary Lou's car had been totaled, and she had walked away from what could have been a fatal accident without a scratch. Yet, somehow, her Burg manners kicked in, and she was worried about the timeliness of my evening meal. I didn't tell her that I never ate dinner at six anymore, unless I was at my mom's house. A year ago, I would have amended that to include dinner with Stephanie's family, but it had been months since I had been to the Plum house. Although, Steph and I had promised to stay in touch, that was easier said than done. I wasn't even sure how often she made it back to Trenton for family dinners.

I swallowed the urge to ask Mary Lou if she had heard from her best friend recently and said instead, "Dinner actually sounds great. Do you want me to order us a couple of meatball subs from Pino's?"

Mary Lou had been bustling around the kitchen, pulling coffee cups from a cupboard. At my question, she stopped and faced me, uncertainty etched on her face. "I have pot roast with gravy in the slow cooker and I was going to make mashed potatoes and steam some green beans." She chewed on her bottom lip for a second. "If you'd rather have meatball subs, I could defrost some meatballs and marinara that I made last week. Dinner might be closer to seven though."

Once again, Mary Lou misinterpreted my silence. She smiled, a little too brightly. "Of course, Pino's always sounds good. I love their sauce. It's much better than mine, really."

"Pot roast?" I asked. "You made a pot roast? Even though you planned to be home alone tonight?"

She shrugged, as if it was no big deal. "Girl's gotta eat, and I actually like to cook."

I wondered about that old saying, _Opposites attract._ Was it true for best friends as well as lovers?

She poured us each a cup of coffee, and then wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. "Steph always thought that was the strangest thing she'd ever heard," Mary Lou admitted. "But it never stopped her from eating my pot roast."

Dinner was served in dining room, the table set with china plates, pressed cotton napkins and tall glasses, filled with iced tea. I had two servings of pot roast, while Mary Lou and I talked about childhood friends, those who'd recently come back to the Burg and others, like us, who'd never really left. After I declined a third serving of roast, Mary Lou suggested a change in venue.

"So should we have dessert in the living room? I have some pound cake and some berries. It won't take five minutes to whip up some cream to top the berries…"

"I'd love some pound cake," I said. "Don't worry about the whipped cream though."

"But Steph said you loved whipped cream—" Mary Lou stopped herself and blushed a deep red, no doubt suddenly remembering the context of the conversation about whipped cream. "Shit," she said, "this is awkward."

"It kind of is… it seems you know way more about me than I know about you." I smiled at her, hoping to put her at ease. "Maybe we should level the playing field."

If possible, Mary Lou turned an even deeper shade of red. I couldn't help be curious about what she and Steph had shared.

I flashed her a grin meant to be half way between choirboy and wolf. "Mary Lou," I said, "let's sit on the couch and you can tell me about Lenny."

In the end, we decided to forgo pound cake in lieu of beer. We settled at opposite ends of the couch with a couple of bottles of Coors Light. Mary Lou sat facing me, her back against the arm of the couch and her bare feet on the couch cushion between us. Her toenails were painted a brilliant and achingly familiar shade of blue.

_Get a grip,_ I admonished myself. "Spill," I said to Mary Lou.

She took a deep breath, tucking her hair behind her ears and giving me a resigned look. "Lenny got hurt on the job, maybe eighteen months ago, now. He fell off a ladder onto his back and cracked a couple of vertebrae. The doctor said it didn't require surgery… just rest, some pain pills, and a brace, while he healed, maybe some physical therapy."

"Close call," I said, "sounds like he was lucky."

"That's what we thought at first," she replied. She blew out a little puff of air that ruffled her bangs and then she hugged her knees to her chest.

"But in the end, the only things that seemed to help were the pills. In the beginning, they sort of took the edge off, you know, so he could do the therapy. But before long, he couldn't do without them."

"Lenny became addicted to painkillers?"

She nodded. "He stopped working, lost his business. His doctor ultimately refused to write him a prescription for any more painkillers, so he got a new doctor. When that one cut him off, he found other ways to get the pills. He spent all of our savings."

"Addiction to prescription pain pills is unfortunately pretty common," I said, "but there are treatments available."

"He spent six weeks at a residential program in Connecticut before we lost our insurance. You probably heard that I've been selling real estate, but that doesn't exactly come with a great benefits package." Mary Lou grimaced, like she had a bad taste in her mouth. "Lenny wasn't home two weeks, and he was using again."

"And now?"

"The last I know, he was staying with his brother in Arizona. His parents were trying to convince him to try another treatment program in Phoenix."

We sat in silence for a minute or two. In the distance, I heard a car backfire and then the dog next door started to bark. _Better get home and tend to Bob_, I thought.

"Another beer?" Mary Lou asked, before I had a chance to thank her for dinner and say goodnight.

"Why not," I heard myself saying. "You stay there. I'll get them."

Two beers later, we were still sitting on the couch, this time in a comfortable, if slightly buzzed, silence. That's when she startled the hell out of me. Mary Lou stretched out her leg and trailed her perfectly manicured toes up my thigh.

"Mrs. Stankovic, are you flirting with me?"

Suddenly, Mary Lou looked as startled as I felt, almost as if she had suddenly become aware of her surroundings. "No! Absolutely not! Crap. I mean, I don't think so. It's been so long, since I've flirted with anyone, I don't think I remember how."

I arched one eyebrow at her in disbelief. Jersey girls were _born_ knowing how to flirt. It was in their DNA.

"No, really," she protested. "I mean, Lenny was my first boyfriend, and we started going out, when I was a high school sophomore. It's not like I got a lot of practice."

She looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, and instinctively, I understood what came next. She was getting ready to bolt.

"Mary Lou, it's not that I'm not attracted to you. I am." I caught her foot and massaged the arch gently. "It's just that I've spent much of the last three years in a really weird love triangle. I'm not sure there's enough Maalox in the Trenton for me to try that again right now."

"I get it," she said softly. "You're still in love in Steph."

"Lenny, Mare. I'm talking about Lenny."

"Lenny and I are getting a divorce," she said firmly. "All he needs to do, is sign the papers."

"Maybe if he gets the right kind of treatment, maybe a twelve step program for narcotic addiction, things are still salvageable."

"Irreconcilable differences," she said crisply. Then her eyes softened a little. "He picked up the oldest boys from baseball practice, when he was strung out on Oxycontin. He nearly drove into a tree before he was out of the parking lot. Fortunately, Eddie was there, and he noticed that Lenny was driving erratically. He brought the three of them home."

We sat in silence for a moment. "I can't forgive that," she said, "or ever take a chance that it could happen again."

She pulled her feet from me, hugging her bent knees to her chest again. "So you're really over Steph?"

_Was I?_ I took so long to answer that the answer was ultimately painfully clear to both of us.

"So why did you let her go?" Mary Lou finally asked.

I closed my eyes, mentally sifting through memories of _that_ day.

"Do you remember last January… there was a house on Whittaker that was being used as a meth lab, and it exploded?"

Mary Lou nodded. That case had been all over the news for weeks afterward. Hard to live in the 'Burg and not know about it.

"I didn't know Carla Petacki lived in that house. I had no way of knowing that Carla had been arrested for child endangerment, that she had skipped bail, or that Steph had her file. But as soon as I heard the call go out over the scanner that day, I couldn't feel anything but dread in the pit of my stomach."

"Ranger and I arrived at the house at almost exactly the same time." In fact, I'd gotten there first by thirty seconds or so and parked on the street, directly behind Steph's Mustang. Ironically, it was the last time I would come in first in what had become the _Race for Stephanie Plum's Heart._

"The fire department had mostly controlled the blaze, and they didn't try to stop us, when we entered the house. We found a body in the hallway, between the living room and the dining room." He hesitated, recognizing that Mary Lou wasn't accustomed to the graphic details that had come to be a part of his everyday existence.

"Tell me," she said.

"The body was burned almost beyond recognition. All we could tell was, that the victim had curly brown hair, and she was wearing charred black leather Bruno Magli boots with three-inch heels."

"Steph loved those boots," Mary Lou whispered. "She never could have afforded them, but she'd done a distraction that brought in a high bond for RangeMan…" Her voice trailed off, and she shot me a guilty look. "Shit, Joe. I'm really sorry."

"It's OK, Mary Lou. I know about the boots. She called me from the mall, after she bought them. She wanted me to take her out dancing, to celebrate." And I meant to take her, I really did.

"So there we are in the hallway, standing over the body. We're both fucking sobbing over Steph, and all of sudden, Mañoso just takes off."

"Why? Where'd he go?"

"At the time, my first thought was, _what the fuck?_ But then, I figured it gave me a few minutes alone with her, you know, time to say goodbye."

I saw a tear run down Mary Lou's cheek, and I reminded myself that I was talking about her best friend… about her best friend's charred body.

"Go on," she whispered, motioning for me to continue.

I closed my eyes, struggling to find the right words. "I stayed with… the body, until the Medical Examiner arrived. Then, I did a quick sweep through the house looking for other, uh, victims. I left the house by the back door and there they were. He was kneeling in the snow next to a couple of rosebushes, tears streaming down his face, cradling her in his arms like a baby. If you discount that Steph was barely conscious, she looked pretty much unharmed, except for some scratches on her face from the rosebushes and that she was barefoot."

"The skip stealing her boots and locking her out of the house probably saved her life," Mary Lou offered.

"Yeah, that and Mañoso found her when he did. She was trying to get in the house, when it exploded. The blast knocked her into the bushes, she cracked a few ribs, and one of them punctured a lung. The paramedics said that it was a miracle that she was in the ambulance, when she stopped breathing. If she'd still been lying there in the yard…"

"How did he know?" she asked softly.

"How the hell does he do half the things he does? The important thing was, he knew it wasn't her in that house, and he went to look for her. He saved her."

"And that's when you stepped aside."

"There was no way I could compete with that, with the connection that he has with her."

_And the connection she has with him_, I thought, willing the familiar ache in my chest to subside.

Another memory, the memory that I worked so hard to suppress, bubbled up from my subconscious.

"_Don't leave me, Babe. I'll do anything. Just don't leave me." _

_Her beautiful blue eyes flicked open, just for a second. "Why would I ever leave you? I love you, Ranger."_

He was the one that she called out for, when she woke up from the surgery to repair her collapsed lung. I was there, but he was the one, whom she needed.

"It's late," I said, "I should go. Are you going to be OK?" I knew from firsthand experience that the nightmares after a near-death experience were a bitch. Unlike the actual event, the nightmares didn't seem to have an expiration date. If you were lucky, they just got a little less frequent over time.

"I'll get there," she said, "maybe I'll just watch a little TV and sleep on the couch tonight."

"You a Ghostbusters fan too?" I joked.

"King of Queens on DVD," she said, "it makes me laugh."

"You know," I said, "it's been forever since I watched that show. I like it because they make my family look almost normal. I wouldn't mind watching an episode or two."

"You'd sit here on the couch with me a while?"

"You have that episode where Ray Romano comes to visit? I love that one."

The sound of the morning newspaper hitting the Stankovic screen door startled me awake. My head was pressed against the back of the couch, and my legs were straight out in front of me, my feet propped up on the coffee table.

Mary Lou was stretched out, her head on an embroidered pillow that was resting in my lap. She sat up and yawned, looking only a tiny bit self-conscious. Then the Burg hostess in her woke up. "Would you like some coffee, or maybe some breakfast?"

"I appreciate the offer, but I'd better get home and let Bob out."

"Oh God, I totally forgot about poor Bob. Go." Uncertainly, she reached out and gave me an awkward hug. "You were so nice to drive me home and stay with me, Joe. It, it meant a lot," she stammered. "I don't know how I can ever thank you."

"That's what friends are for, Mare." What was that thing Mañoso always said to Steph? _No price?_ Honestly, I never understood half the shit he said to her.

I was half way out the back door when I turned to look at Mary Lou. "Of course, I seem to remember you saying something last night about meatballs and marinara. I thought, I could stop by later with the replacement glass for that upstairs window of yours, and maybe you would want to thank me for _that_ with some homemade meatball subs?"

"Dinner?" she asked. "You want dinner?"

I let out an exaggerated sigh. "If you really don't feel like cooking, you could take me to Pino's, but I'm pretty sure the sauce you make is better."

"You want anything special for dessert? I could make brownies or cupcakes—" She stopped herself, and I saw the telltale crimson flush begin to creep up her neck.

"No cupcakes," I said lightly. "See, I had this problem, and now I'm working through a twelve step program for cupcake addiction."

"Got it," she said, "and how's that working for you?"

"I'll get there," I told her. And for the first time in months, I actually believed it. "I think I just needed a little help from a friend."


End file.
